How little can you live with?

I need a good non-stick wok, a lid and a sharp knife.

[mk_dropcaps style=”simple-style”]A[/mk_dropcaps]fter decluttering for the past four months, I was almost queasy walking into a shop today. Seeing things for sale on shelves that I’ve been purging for my life must be like a not-quite-recovered alcoholic walking through a liquor store. Well, or maybe the opposite: I didn’t want what was on the shelves and in fact, it was making me want to run out of there so we didn’t buy anything.

I want you and only you.

It didn’t happen that way. We bought: (bed) pillows, a good non-stick wok, some peanut M&Ms and I’m-not-sure-what-else. But I didn’t want to buy anything. I don’t need 12 knives, I need one knife (OK, maybe a good serrated knife, too). A good wok-like pan with a lid. That’s it for the kitchen.

After purging and cleansing and decluttering and selling and giving away for many months, I don’t even want to see stuff any longer. I don’t want to go in stores, especially stores with nice products and cut-rate prices. I don’t want to need anything, but we’ve moved, we have an empty house, we actually need things.

I’m not a monk. I’m not a hermit. I’m not a purist or even a minimalist. Remember the film where the guy ate at a fast-food place for something like a month straight, breakfast, lunch and dinner and he gained weight and felt terrible? That’s how I feel about stuff right now. It’s almost become a game to see how little we can get away with.

I saw a truck today at the market and it was loading a forklift that had some kind of kiosk chock full of books. I love books. I write books. But even books I don’t want. My very first thought was:

“I could fit that entire truck on my Kindle.”

What do I want? A Vitamix. I saw several items today that don’t need to exist if you have a Vitamix:

Blender

Food processor

Soup maker (this was really a machine)

Smoothie maker (a small blender)

OK. I’ll stop. I feel like I’m venting. It’ll get better. I just need to recover.